Pagan Lover

by Anne Hampson

  ‘You’ve forgotten the gentleman—’

  ‘Sit back and relax, Tara,’ drawled a voice that instantly set her heart pounding so violently that she felt physically sick. ‘We’ve a long way to go—’

  ‘Let me out of here!’ she cried, unconsciously hammering on the back of his seat. ‘Stop—immediately!’

  Leon Petrides took off the cap he was wearing and tossed it carelessly on to the seat beside him. Tara saw him brush a hand through his hair as though he were relieved to be free of the cap.

  ‘I said, sit back and relax.’ The accented voice was imperious in spite of its softness. ‘I shall be driving at speed, so I advise you not to open the door.’

  ‘I shall open it!’ She glanced through the window; the car was travelling at sixty miles an hour at least. ‘I’ll open the window and scream,’ she amended, her brain working frantically to find a way out of this terrifying situation. Fool that she had been, sublimely taking it for granted that she had outwitted the Greek. But never could she have visualised, even in her wildest flights of fancy, his going to lengths as dramatic and daring as these. ‘You can’t possibly get away with this!’ she cried. ‘The police will already have’ been alerted; your accomplice will have been arrested—’

  ‘My dear,’ interrupted Leon Petrides quietly, ‘you are merely voicing your hopes. The man who helped me was an employee of mine whom I sent for a few days ago when, realising you had every intention of breaking the promise you made to me, I decided to abduct you and take you to my home in Greece. He will have driven off immediately, before your friend could gather his wits sufficiently to guess that it was a plot. This employee will be on my boat when we arrive at Bridport—’

  ‘Boat?’ she broke in hollowly. ‘You’re—you’re taking me to a b-boat?’ She looked down at the lovely bouquet she held, and the tears could no longer be suppressed. ‘Please let me go,’ she cried. ‘I don’t kn-know what you’re expecting to gain by running off with me! You’ll be caught, and sent to jail. Surely you’re afraid?’

  ‘Do I look like a man who’s afraid?’ he asked with a trace of amusement. And then, ignoring the rest of what she had said, ‘You ask me what I shall gain. A wife, Tara, the girl who promised to marry me and then went back on her word.’ So soft the voice, and smoothly even, but beneath it all there was anger, fierce and terrifyingly primitive. Tara shivered, aware that her whole body was cold.

  ‘I shall never marry you!’ she cried. ‘Never! I’m marrying David and nothing’s going to stop me!’ She spoke wildly, urged by fear. This foreigner was so cool and confident. That he was committing a felony seemed not to affect him in the least. ‘You’re mad!’ she went on, frustrated that he would not speak. ‘You can’t take me to Greece against my will! How can you possibly get me there?’ she added, trying to affect a confidence he was far from feeling. ‘There’s no way—’

  ‘I’ve said we’re going by boat,’ he broke in to remind her, his lean brown hand lifted to smother a yawn. ‘I am hoping that, once aboard, you will become resigned and behave yourself. However if you do not behave I shall have you locked in your cabin and not allowed out until the end of the voyage.’ He increased his speed to over eighty miles an hour. ‘Fate has thrown us together; we must not fight our destiny, Tara, for it was mapped out before our birth.’

  ‘You talk like a fool!’

  ‘And you talk unguardedly,’ he warned. ‘I am not used to being spoken to with disrespect. You must learn, and quickly, if you want to avoid punishment.

  She gritted her teeth, fury erasing—for the moment—all her terror.

  ‘If you think for one moment I shall treat you with respect then you are a fool—an idiot, in fact! Who would respect a criminal—an abductor?’

  ‘My wife will respect me,’ he stated softly, ‘just as all others with whom I come into contact respect me.’

  ‘Just who are you?’ she demanded curiously.

  ‘Your husband... and your master.’

  She could have struck him if the action would not have endangered her life. There must be a way out of this, she thought frantically—and then her heart leapt as the solution occurred to her.

  ‘My passport!’ she cried triumphantly. ‘You won’t be able to take me far without that....’ Her voice trailed and her eyes dilated, for while she was speaking he was bringing something from his pocket, and now he held it up before her incredulous eyes. ‘You ... stole it … but how—?’

  ‘My man—the taxi-driver. He burgled your rooms. It was simple, so he tells me.’ Leon replaced the passport and concentrated on his driving. The trees flew past as he headed for the coast and the picturesque little resort of Bridport. . . . And there he had a boat. But she would escape somehow, for how could he possibly force her aboard with people about?

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT was dark when they reached the harbour. Tara scarcely had time to glance around before a hand was clapped over her mouth and she was hustled into a motor boat and taken aboard the motor yacht. It seemed to have happened in a flash, so that all she had rehearsed on the final, silent miles of the car journey faded into nothingness and she was being pushed unceremoniously into a teak-panelled cabin from where she could hear the rhythmic throb of engines already running. The boat had seven berths plus crew, she had been told by her abductor, and an owner’s cabin which was fitted out with almost everything one would find in a top class hotel. She was not in this grand cabin, but there was a fitted wardrobe with a pretty vanitory unit attached to one side. The bed was soft to her touch, and covered with a blue lace counterpane over a white blanket. Tara sat down on it, tears streaming down her face as she thought of what might have been but for the criminal act of this Greek savage who had her in his power. She would have been married, a happy glowing bride travelling to the honeymoon hotel— She cut her thoughts as a renewed flood of tears escaped. But inevitably her mind was soon dwelling on the same thoughts again. She wondered what had transpired as a result of her disappearance. Obviously Jake’s first act would be to reach the nearest phone and contact the police. But they had not found her and now—now, she told herself—they never would. How could they? There was no reason for them to connect her abductor with the owner of the Catana, luxury crusier moored at a little Dorset harbour. Tara’s thoughts wandered to the first time she had been alone with Leonides Petrides, and she deplored her own behaviour in not telling David about him. She had told no one at all, so his name could not in any way be brought up when the police were conducting their interviews with the various people who knew her. Fool that she had been! Looking back it seemed only logical to complain about the Greek’s molestations, and yet she had kept silent.

  She turned as she heard the cabin door open. Leon stood in the doorway, one hand resting idly on the jamb and the other thrust into his pocket. On his teak-brown face a sardonic smile played, reflected in his pitchblende eyes. She found herself noticing the dignity of his pose, the arrogance of his features— patrician, Greek and pagan. The dark eyes moved, slowly, insolently, over her white-clad figure and his amusement seemed to increase.

  ‘Pity we haven’t a priest on board,’ he commented mockingly as he advanced into the cabin. ‘He could have married us, seeing that you are already attired for the occasion.’

  She was almost in tears again; she did not know whether to threaten or to plead, but looking up into his granite-hard, implacable countenance she felt with sinking heart that nothing she could do or say would have the slightest effect on him.

  ‘What—what are your in-intentions?’ she managed to whisper at last, and she saw the mocking expression that entered his eyes.

  ‘What an absurd question to ask, my dear. You know what my intentions are—’ He broke off and laughed to himself, then fell into a reflective mood before he continued, ‘For the first time in my life my intentions are honourable. I intend to marry you.’ The black eyes flickered over her slender, drooping figure, staying for a moment on her hands, which were twisting and untwi
sting all the time, a release for the fear and uncertainty that dwelt within her. ‘You should be flattered, and happy—not looking as downcast as if some great tragedy were affecting you.’ The alien voice had taken on an edge of sternness, and the thin nostrils moved slightly, as if anger affected their owner. ‘Shall I command you to smile or are you going to do it voluntarily?’

  The ready tears rolled down her white cheeks.

  ‘Let me go,’ she begged. ‘Take me back—please, oh, please! Won’t you take me back, if I promise—promise not to give you away to—the—p-police?’

  ‘Would I have gone to all this trouble if I were going to allow myself to be persuaded to take you back?’

  ‘You’re heartless!’ she cried, wringing her hands, then stretching them out in a gesture of humble pleading. ‘I was to be married—I’d—I’d be married to David n-now and going on—on my honeymoon. Be—be kind to me and let me go—go to the man I love!’

  He stood erect, unmoved by her anguished entreaties. The black eyes were alight, fiercely holding hers, merciless in the intensity of their stare. She remembered how he had held her eyes to his before, as if he would hypnotise her, bending her to his will.

  ‘You think you love that man, but I assure you that you don’t, and marriage to him would have proved disastrous. I have saved you and one day you’ll thank me.’

  ‘I’ll never thank you!’ she cried in a choking voice. ‘What right have you, a foreigner, to feel you’ve the right to interfere in my life?’

  ‘I shall not only interfere in your life,’ he stated calmly, ‘but I shall, from now on, control it.’

  She gasped at the sheer arrogant pomposity of his statement, and the manner of its delivery. If he were a god he could not assume any greater dictatorship than this! Anger rose within her, transcending everything else—fear, distress and hopelessness.

  ‘Get out of here and leave me alone!’ she almost shouted. ‘Get out, and stay out!’

  For answer he laughed lightly and reached for her hand.

  ‘You have spirit,’ he observed, ‘and I like a woman with spirit, which is why I prefer an English wife to a Greek one. They’ve been brought up to be meek—’ His grip tightened painfully on her wrist as she tried to snatch it from his hold. ‘However,’ he continued languidly, ‘do not think, Tara, that I will allow my wife too much liberty where her behaviour and her tongue are concerned. The Greek male is traditionally master in his own house, and I am Greek.’ He looked at her, frowning suddenly at the evidence of tears on her face. ‘I hope I make myself clear?’

  She looked at him, white to the lips but strangely composed now, for she felt that dignity might impress him more effectively than anger.

  ‘Perfectly clear. But as I’m not your wife the traditions of the Greeks can’t affect me.’

  Again he laughed, and pulled her slender frame towards him. She found herself against his hard body, seethed when her chin was tilted so that she was forced to look into his eyes. His lips came down, slowly, as if he savoured the revulsion that came to her face. His words told her she was right.

  ‘You can look like that now—as if you hate me—but in a moment or two you’ll be thrilled by my kisses—’

  ‘Thrilled!’ she almost spat out at him, her eyes blazing. ‘What an opinion you have of yourself!’

  ‘My experience with you,’ he reminded her tauntingly, ‘was more than enough for me to realise that you’d make a reciprocative bed-mate——’

  ‘Stop it!’ Again she broke into what he was saying, her resolve to be dignified forgotten in the swell of anger that consumed her, anger born mainly from the knowledge—the hateful, reluctant admission—that he was speaking the truth when he implied that she had enjoyed his passionate lovemaking. ‘Let me go—you might as well, because I shall never be your wife, never!’

  ‘Then you shall be my pillow-friend,’ was his calm rejoinder. ‘I mean to have you, Tara, so it will be more comfortable if you resign yourself to the inevitable.’ And with that his arms encircled her in a hawser-like embrace and his lips thrust against hers, bruising them, mastering her attempts to keep them closed. The ardour of his actions was resisted for a while, but it became too much for her—the sensual movements of his lean lithe body against hers, the pagan mastery of his lips, the possessive arrogance of his caressing hands.... He took her breast, gently, the movements of his fingers a persuasion that was irresistible, and she found herself pressing against him, as she had before, especially on the night she had promised to marry him. Shaken when at last he released her, she stood there, limp and weeping, bewildered and lost, unable to think clearly or even to speak to him. His eyes were fixed on her face; one hand picked up a few folds of her wedding-dress.

  ‘Yes,’ he nodded with a little sigh which she felt was an affectation, ‘it’s a great pity we haven’t a priest on board.’

  ‘I can’t see that it would make any difference,’ she flashed. ‘I’d refuse to marry you.’

  ‘A refusal that would not do you much good, my dear.’

  She looked at him; he had let the dress fall and the folds he had held mingled with the others. She was able to move away unhindered.

  ‘The priest would have to be as big a villain as you,’ she said, watching his expression with interest.

  ‘I have friends,’ he told her mildly. ‘We shall be married, I assure you.’

  ‘I’m to be forced to the altar?’ Her eyes never wavered from his face, but as before she read nothing from the fixed unsmiling stare he gave her. ‘At gunpoint, perhaps?’

  He gave a short laugh.

  ‘Nothing quite as melodramatic as that,’ he assured her.

  ‘What kind of coercion are you intending to use?’ She was asking the question automatically, her mind elsewhere as she tried to capture a picture of what was happening at home. David heartbroken—and his parents who had come to love her; his sister Mary with whom she got on so well. The concern and confusion that must have occurred in the church when the bride failed to appear on time, and then Jake appearing with his dramatic and incredible news that she had been kidnapped. Again Tara cursed herself for not telling someone about the Greek who had kept on pestering her.

  ‘If you refuse the honourable state of marriage,’ he was replying suavely, ‘then you will be my pillow-friend. I’ve already told you so.’ She made no answer because an idea had come to her; it was clutching at a straw, she knew, but it might bring results. ‘I believe, though,’ the Greek was adding, ‘that you will choose marriage, since you are the kind of girl who would shrink from what you considered to be dishonourable.’

  ‘I intend to be neither your wife nor your mistress!’

  ‘Brave words,’ he applauded with mocking amusement, ‘but ineffectual under the circumstances. I have you in my power and you know it.’ The dark foreign eyes swept her figure, stripping it naked. ‘I can take you now, this very moment, if I choose.’

  She coloured at his words and under the roving, allseeing glance, and for a space she hesitated before speaking what was in her mind. Would it work? Well, she would soon find out. She looked him in the eye and said,

  ‘Do you really believe you can get away with this abduction? Do you suppose I haven’t talked to anyone about the way you made a nuisance of yourself?’ She managed to laugh and hoped it sounded convincing. ‘I’ve told several people! My fiancé knows about you— and some of the nurses at the hospital! I’ve told so many people! The police have only to put a few questions here and there to get all the clues they need! You’ll be arrested the moment we land in Greece—and you’ll stand trial and be sent to prison for years and years....’ Her voice began to falter to a lower pitch as she noticed the expression of sheer amusement that had settled on his face. Her words petered out altogether as a low laugh tilted the corners of his mouth. She swallowed convulsively; she should have known the hateful man would see through her deceit.

  ‘My child,’ he said with some considerable humour, ‘how transparent you ar
e! You’ve thought of all this only seconds ago.’

  ‘It’s the truth!’ she said persistently, fighting to the very last inch. ‘True, I tell you I You’ll regret it if you ignore my warning!’

  ‘It’s a good try,’ he said, regarding her imperturbably from his superior height. ‘But you seem to have forgotten that you were willing, just now, to promise not to give me away to the police. Such a promise would be of little use if the police were already on the scent. And that is not the only blunder you’ve made. If you’d been so sure of rescue, and of my early arrest, you would not have pleaded the way you have.’ His eyes became admiring. ‘You’re not the girl to plead in that craven way—’

  ‘I was not craven!’ She looked as if she could have murdered him for using a word like that.

  ‘See what I mean? You have spirit, and I know just what it cost you to beg like that. You’d never have done it if, in your secret mind, you knew you would soon be rescued by the forces of the law.’

  ‘I hate you,’ she quivered. ‘I’d kill you if I could!’

  ‘At this moment, perhaps,’ he agreed unconcernedly. ‘But later you will feel very differently. I can so easily make you.’

  Her teeth clenching, she turned away and he went out, only to return a few minutes later carrying three cardboard boxes which he placed on the bed.

  ‘You’d better change,’ he recommended. ‘You can’t go about in a wedding-dress all the time.’ He paused, a mocking smile curving his mouth at her expression. ‘Yes, I have bought you clothes,’ he told her. ‘Top ones which I hope will meet your approval and underwear which I know will meet with mine, seeing that I chose them.’

  She stared, revolted.

  ‘You went into a shop for—for underwear?’ He laughed and assured her that he was used to buying such things.

  ‘My various pillow-friends have always expected this kind of gift—among more expensive ones, of course.’